At last we have someone new to blame for our social woes. It is not the greedy bankers or the politicians who are making our lives a misery – it is those awful wrinklies. While working families sleep six to a room, oldsters are living it up in their mansions. Or so The Intergenerational Foundation's look at the housing crisis implies.

Having spare bedrooms, previously a blameless result of children leaving home, is rebranded in the report as "hoarding" living space. And the foundation's co-founder Angus Hanton proclaims: "The divide between the housing 'haves' and 'have nots' has moved from being one dominated by wealth or class to one dominated by age."

Magnanimously, the IF does not "blame" older people for clinging to these homes when younger families need them, but just asks them to think about the "profound social consequences of their actions". In other words, it is not angry, just disappointed. And suggests dropping stamp duty to encourage older people to move.

Unsurprisingly Age UK is not impressed. "No one should feel they have to move out of their own family home unless it is what they want to do," it says.